The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), within the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF), invites applications for cooperative agreements under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agency Data and Research Capacity: Planning Grants (Phase I). These projects are meant to support partnerships between CCDF Lead Agencies and researchers to develop and improve state, territory, and tribal data systems and build the capacity of CCDF Lead Agencies to collect, analyze, and use data to guide child care policy decisions and program improvement efforts.
Sponsored projects will work in collaboration to: (1) assess the current data and research capacity of the CCDF Lead Agency; (2) develop questions of interest to investigate state, territory, and tribal child care policies and practices; (3) develop logic models to identify the data needed to address the questions of interest; (4) identify data sources available to answer questions of interest and assess the accessibility of those data; (5) identify possible data sources from other state, territory, tribal, and local data systems for linking; (6) determine whether there is a need to collect data to answer policy-relevant questions; and (7) address the barriers to collecting, analyzing, and using data to inform child care policy decisions. These projects are intended to build the capacity of CCDF Lead Agencies to use data, including data on children, families, the workforce, and providers that participate in the child care subsidy system, to make data-informed decisions to improve child care policies and practices.
Deadline: July 8, 2024
The applicant eligibility is unrestricted. The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agency Data and Research Capacity Award Program is intended to fund collaborative research projects between a CCDF Lead Agency and their research partner(s) (e.g., institutions of higher education, research organizations). Therefore, eligible applicants may be either the CCDF Lead Agency or research partner organizations.
CCDF Lead Agencies can partner on multiple applications for funding under this awards program; however, it is unlikely that a Lead Agency would receive more than one award as the award recipient or as the partner. This also applies to research partner organizations, such that organizations may submit multiple applications as the research partner, but an organization is unlikely to receive more than one award as the award recipient or as the partner.
Award Ceiling:
$150,000
Per Project Period
Award Floor:
$75,000
Per Project Period